Organizations pay a lot of money for external researchers to perform various types of research every year. Research may range from economic research, scientific research, engineering research, competitor research, and so forth. For example, an engineer may order an engineering research project from an outside engineering consultant firm, while a marketing manager may order an industry survey from a marketing research firm. Research reports ate generally sent to a member of an organization who ordered the research. The members typically use the research reports for their specific purposes and store the research on their computers or files. For large companies with thousands of employees, a lot of research can be performed by many different research firms and the resulting research, while potentially helpful to many employees or members, is typically only made available to a few.
Employees who work with outside research companies typically have to learn how to use a user interface of each outside research company's user interface. Often, the user interfaces are very different from each other. Furthermore, each research company produces research reports using different formats.
In addition, to work with each outside research company, each authorized employee is generally required to maintain a customer number of the company or employee and password. Maintaining such information can become cumbersome, especially if three or more research is companies are used.
Another problem that exists with the use of outside research companies is termination of a relationship with a research company. Once the relationship has been terminated, any research performed by the research company generally becomes inaccessible to members of the organization. Thereafter, member of the organization must maintain the research reports. Given that employees switch companies so often these days, much research becomes lost by the relationship becoming terminated with an outside research company, an employee leaving, or misplacement of the research reports.